Our start was another early morning, eventful drive to the airport. The driver who turned up to pick us up had his windscreen all iced over and clearly had no idea what to do about it! Him and his friend just thought it was very funny and set off to drive to the airport completely blind and giggling away! We gave him a few instructions on how to best solve the problem and he was very surprised that it was possible to get hot air to come out of his air vents!

As Amritsar and Varanasi are quite a way from the rest of our itinerary and finding all the decent trains fully booked we were pleased to find that if you didn't mind leaving at the crack of dawn (or more like the middle of the night!) then the domestic flights here are really cheap. Nevertheless, our return flight from Amritsar has seen the end of our recent jet-setting. As India is so vast and we have only just over 3 weeks here we have decided to spend the rest of our time here in Rajasthan and have booked a car and a driver for the next couple of weeks. Thankfully, not only did he turn up at the airport to meet us on time, but seems like a nice old boy and, surprisingly, has a decent car - with that rarest of Asian commodities - working seat belts!

First on the list was a small town called Pushkar - another very holy place, set around a lake. We found that our driver does have one fault and we've identified a new mode of timing - Indian Hours. Our '5-6 hour' journey from Delhi, somehow took over 8 despite it being totally traffic free! Having said that it was nice to be seeing some of the Indian countryside and sharing the road with ladies carrying pots on their heads, farmers and camels!

Despite the chill factor we are now pleased that we are here in the winter. Not only do we avoid the 45-50oC summer heat, but also get to see the country at its greenest before the sun burns everything to death!

We arrived at Pushkar just as night fell - about 13 hours and 1,000km after leaving Amritsar - and were pleased to find that our hotel was pretty nice and that we had a big room with sofa's and tables. With that in mind we decided to get room service and make the most of it - what else are you meant to do on a Saturday but dial a takeaway curry to eat on your lap?! Graham was also particularly pleased to turn on the TV to find Tottenham playing live on a cable channel (especially as they won 3-0)!

After a good nights rest we then had the morning to explore before our onward journey to Jodhpur. After a few hours walking around and sitting by the lake we found Pushkar a great little laid back place, with a plethora of cows, weddings and Saddu's, and were pleased that we made the overnight stop on our way.